To My Colleagues: (An unsent letter to High School teachers during a pandemic)
In regards to the current state of affairs with our student population, their grades and their mental health, I think there are a few things we should consider when it comes to putting in their final grade for the year:
1.This year has been hard for everyone.
The fact that we are going through a global pandemic is no fault of our students. They are doing the best they can, just like the rest of us- some better than others. If you looked at Mrs. B****'s email regarding the testimonies of students and families and what they have been dealing with you will understand that deaths in the family, loss of employment for the primary earner and the need to take in or take care of extended family members are very common things our students are dealing with. As a result many, many of our students are babysitting all day or primary caregiving for their grandparents and/or have had to pick up menial jobs to help the family make ends meet. Others are out on their own working full time and paying rent--and somehow, thankfully, still trying to stay in school. Obviously, this contributes to increased anxiety and depression. Many of our students have either attempted suicide or were/are hospitalized due to suicidal ideations. Anyone who has ever had to deal with strife at home knows that family comes first, even over education. I know all of you are aware of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Food, water, shelter, and sleep are all on the bottom tier -- the most important-- followed by personal security, employment, health, and resources on the next tier. So, from a lot of our students’ perspectives, our class just isn’t the most important thing in their lives right now-- nor should it be. “Love and Belonging” is the third tier. How can we tell our students that they are loved and that they belong more than by showing them grace and passing them?
2. Understand your power and your role in the system and in your students' lives.
We have the power and the ability to affect the course of these students’ lives with the decisions we make in regards to passing or failing. Research shows that failing students, and students who were held back, are more likely to drop out. There is no evidence that shows punitive grading-- punishing students with grades as a means to motivate them-- works. On the contrary, it makes students feel like they can’t cut it and increases the chances of them dropping out. Failing your students in no way helps anyone. It can ruin the lives of students because they may never graduate due to perceived ineptitude. Our community is the one that suffers when students drop out. They have a hard time finding a job and getting into higher education and can end up homeless. Youth homelessness is on the rise and us failing students will only contribute to that statistic. So we have the power to show grace-- and provide an opportunity for someone that could uplift them in the future, or show malice or disregard and punish a student when they are having to choose between their family, their well-being, or their education and not choosing the latter.
If we choose to fail our students due to perceived apathy, or because they “aren’t putting in the effort,” or as a way to get back at them for “getting away with doing nothing,” then we are not just choosing to be petty, we are choosing to allow that student to potentially have a harder life because of it. We have that power. Does anyone deserve to have their future jeopardized because of a petty teacher? We must ask ourselves “Does public education exist to ruin lives?” No. Then why do that with it-- even if the system allows it?
The other path that we can choose to take is to care for our students--the ones who we are hired to care for-- and provide them with opportunities that could enrich their lives and, more importantly, provide things like second or third chances. Just about everyone has a story about someone who showed them unmerited grace and how it changed their life. We have the opportunity to provide that story for our students. Or we can put them on the path of a very different story, one that isn’t as positive and one that maybe ends in the street. That is the choice we have to make.
3. Remember that “learning” and “education” are two different things. Emphasize the former over the latter.
Grades do not reflect learning. We all inherently know this. And when you go back to the mid-late 1800’s to see why they were created in the first place you find that it is not even what they were designed to measure.
When we make students do a bunch of mindless busy work in order to put a number in the gradebook they are not learning anything other than that they need to do X to get a 100. They are taught to work for the grade, not to learn. We should be incentivizing them to actually learn, not just “do this specific order of operations because you need the grade.” When we auction off grades to students: “Please if anyone turns in the assignment- even though it was due 3 weeks ago-- I’ll still give you a 90,” what we are teaching them is that grades are meaningless. How do we deal with this? Be honest with ourselves and your students about what grades actually mean and reflect and don’t fool ourselves into thinking that they reflect some objective truth about a students ability. They don’t and they never did. When we accept this, it becomes clear how arbitrary the 69-70 pass/fail distinction really is.
4. The world is not a meritocracy.
Life is unfair. We say it all the time and it is true. So why, then, do we treat our students' grades as some sort of fair arbiter. “It’s not fair to the other students if I pass so-and-so...” implies that grades are inherently fair, which we have already established they are not. Every teacher grades vastly differently and an A in English at one school may not be an A at another. Additionally, students learn at wildly varying rates. Some 9th graders read at a 12th grade level and some read at a 5th grade level, and this goes for every student in every grade. We all know this. This is why we are supposed to differentiate our assignments, because of this inherent inequality in human abilities. If every teacher appropriately differentiated the difficulty of our assignments to the correct subset of appropriately capable students, then every student would pass. However, rather than doing this, most of us put the responsibility off on the students.
The real world is not fair, so we shouldn’t pretend that grades are. When we come to realize this, we realize that it simply comes down to one thing: our decision--our power in this situation. Traditionally, we have put the responsibility off on the students and in doing so, abdicated our own in the process. Realize that actually we are responsible for the students' outcomes after high-school. We have the power to decide whether they pass or fail--which will have long term impacts on their future. We can tell ourselves it is their responsibility but we are the ones who sign off on the grade verifications, not them. We ultimately decide their fate. So if we tell ourselves, “they did this to themselves” then we are lying to ourselves. We, alone, have the choice. I urge you to choose wisely, for their sake.
So to recap, our students are dealing with unimaginable situations and stress. You have a role in this system and a role in your students lives, which role will you emphasize? Grades do not equal learning. Use taxpayer money wisely and lastly, life isn’t fair and neither is grading- so let’s not pretend that it is. With all these in mind and the understanding that we have the ultimate power in this situation, I hope we can all see that the lives and the futures of our students depend on US and the decisions WE make. Thank you for your time.
M.Ed. Curriculum and Instruction
"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William Faulkner
If any of the things I’ve said or the perspectives I have presented are new to you, or if you would like to know more about any of these things I do have reading recommendations:
Mrs. B***** Doc of Testimonies:
Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) By Susan D Blum (Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) Paperback – December 1, 2020
https://www.amazon.com/Ungrading-Students-Undermines-Learning-Education/dp/1949199827
Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways To Go Gradeless In a Traditional Grades School by Starr Sackstein by «Dr. Doug Green
https://www.drdouggreen.com/2016/hacking-assessment-10-ways-to-go-gradeless-in-a-traditional-grades-school-by-starr-sackstein/
Grades and Grading Practices (Obstacles to Improving Education and to Helping - At-Risk Students) Charles H. Hargis (2003)
--contact me if you would like a copy of the PDF
Liberating Grades/Liberatory Assessment by SJ Miller
http://www.sjmiller.info/uploads/8/8/5/4/88548862/lib_grades.pdf
Competitive Grading Sabotages Good Teaching BY JOHN D. KRUMBOLTZ AND CHRISTINE J. YEH
http://cultureofpeace.ernestojunsantos.com/uploads/6/4/8/7/6487837/competitive_grading_sabotages_good_teaching.pdf
The Relations of Learning and Grade Orientations to Academic Performance Hall P. Beck, Sherry Rorrer-Woody, and Linda G. Pierce
https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Beck_Hall_1991_The_Relations_of_Learning.pdf
Human Restoration Project Resources:
https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/research?categories=ungrading
